Communication is of great and increasing importance in modern life. Many people spend much of their lives in communication with others in numerous different contexts, such as personal and work email, instant messaging, voice communication, text messaging, online shopping, online auctions, and innumerable other different varieties of communication. Users present many different personas in these contexts, for example, presenting different patterns of behavior and sharing different types of information. In their activities in different personas, users may employ the same or some of the same communication methods, such as instant messaging, email, or other methods, with the user presenting his or her persona based on the identities of the persons and groups with whom he or she is interacting and the activities being conducted, rather than the mechanics by which communication is conducted.
Many users engage in myriad different types of activities, with each type of activity being associated with numerous elements of information relating to the user. For example, a member of a professional organization may have identifiers, such as a registration number identifying himself or herself as a member of the organization, and a user id and password used to log in to a website maintained by the organization. The user may also be willing to share information with members of the organization that he or she may not be willing to share with other persons, such as unidentified email correspondents.
In addition, many people employ numerous different elements of information to identify themselves in their various activities, maintaining, for example, numerous different sets of user ids and passwords. In addition, persons may engage in sets of activities associated with a particular persona, such as actions taken by a player's character in an online game, or bidding habits in online auctions. As the number of activities in which users are engaged continues to increase, the burden of managing the information identifying and enabling these activities continues to increase.